Use Shopify's Amazon Channel to Expand onto the Amazon Marketplace

IMPORTANT: Please keep in mind that this guide only applies to people who are listing products for sale in the United States or Canada and who are using Shopify for their online store. In addition, you cannot use fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) as your fulfillment center with the Amazon Channel.

As great as it is to have your own branded product line and generate business through Facebook, Google and Bing ads, imagine how many products you could sell if your products were on the shelves of every major department store. While you may be fortunate enough to put in the work and have that happen sometime far down the road, there's a way you can do the online equivalent of that now - with very little effort on your part!

There is no bigger shopping marketplace on the planet than Amazon. Getting your products listed on Amazon could be the only thing you need to do to in order to have your sales (and profits) take off to heights you never imagined. Even better, the lion's share of what you pay Amazon for ads only happens when you make a sale, so you'll never be wasting money on clicks that don't produce sales.

It's easy to get your products listed on Amazon and manage everything right from your Shopify admin panel so that you can tap into the enormous number of people looking to buy now on Amazon! Shopify makes it about as simple as it can be.

First, though, selling on Amazon is not for everybody. There are times when your products or store model are not a good fit. We'll outline them first and hopefully, none of them apply to you.

Reasons You May NOT Want to Sell Through Amazon

Although Amazon can deliver a boatload of sales to you, there are a few circumstances where listing on Amazon simply does not make sense:

1. You Don't Make Enough Profit Per Sale

Although you do not have to pay per click, there is a relatively minimal monthly listing fee of $39.99 to list your products in the Amazon Marketplace. The majority of your advertising costs, however, come in the form of commissions that you pay to Amazon every time a sale is made through Amazon.

That fee ranges from 8% to 20%, depending on what you are selling. Because of that, it is obviously not a good place to list your products if you make less than the percentage they will take per sale. Click here for a category list of what Amazon calls their "referral fees".

2. Your Policies Are Not In Line With Amazon's Policies

Amazon spent the last couple of decades establishing not only their dominance in the online selling world, but also a stellar reputation for customer service. They will quickly remove any businesses that do not adhere to their standards of quality for both products and customer service.

3. You Have Not Yet Created Your Own Unique Branded Products

As outlined in the previous point, Amazon is pretty strict about businesses that sell on their platform. You definitely DO NOT want to list products for sale that are dropshipping from China - where you have no control over the shipping time frames, overall product quality nor their return policies.

You also need to make sure that your products are as good as they can possibly be so that you do not get complaints about them. Not only could this hurt your seller rating, making your listings hard to find, but you could have not only your store removed by Amazon, but they could permanently ban you and any business you are associated with from ever selling on their platform again.

If that wasn't enough, you pretty much HAVE TO have your own brand or be selling a very well known brand because Shopify requires all products to have a GTIN (also called a UPC barcode here in the U.S.). The only exception to that is if the products are YOUR OWN BRAND and you register your brand with Amazon. Registering your brand with Amazon, incidentally, helps protect your brand from other sellers who may try to rip it off.

Again, this should not be a problem if you are following the approach we teach at the Store Coach Academy. You should already have improved your product, created your own brand and be shipping things yourself or using our recommended fulfillment center.

4. You Are Not Selling The Right Kind Of Products

Unfortunately, not every product under the sun can be sold on the Amazon Marketplace. Only specific categories of products are eligible and those categories are different, depending on whether you are selling to Canada or the United States. Here are the only categories of products that they will accept, grouped by country:

Amazon.com (United States)

Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry

Arts, Crafts & Sewing

Home & Kitchen

Patio, Lawn & Garden

Sport & Outdoors

Health & Household

Toys & Games

Beauty & Personal Care

Electronics

Amazon.ca (Canada)

Clothing & Accessories

Home & Kitchen

Electronics

Health & Personal Care

Sports & Outdoors

Beauty & Personal Care

Toys & Games

Jewelry

Patio, Lawn & Garden

Assuming you have all four of those bases covered, it's time to get into what you are really here for ... making even more money by listing your products on Amazon!

Sign up for an Amazon Professional Seller Account & Set Up Shopify

In order to use the Amazon Channel app on Shopify, you must have a Professional Seller Account with Amazon. You cannot use the Individual Plan. Although the Amazon Sales Channel is a free app, you will have to pay $39.99/month to Amazon to maintain your Professional Seller Account and, of course, the referral fee I mentioned earlier for every sale you make.

Fortunately, Shopify has put together an excellent tutorial for not only setting up your Amazon Professional Seller Account, but also adding the Amazon Sales Channel as well as setting up your listings automatically through Shopify. You can access that guide by clicking here.

IMPORTANT: Before you follow the steps in their guide, there is one VERY IMPORTANT thing that the Shopify article has wrong ... You DO NOT have to purchase UPCs for your products if you are selling your own brand (they list this as Step #5 in their guide).

Since you will be selling your own branded products, you can, instead, register your brand with Amazon and then you don't need to purchase individual UPCs for every product and variation of each product, which can get very expensive. Keep in mind, however, that you will need to prove to Amazon that you are the owner of an active registered trademark for your brand that appears on your products or packaging.

Other than that, the Shopify Amazon Setup Guide is pretty spot-on! 🙂

That's Not All But It's A Good Start!

The tips and steps outlined above are not the only things you'll need to know about selling on Amazon, but at least you'll now be set up and well on your way to multiplying your sales through the biggest online shopping channel there is.

Later, we'll be adding even more helpful information about optimizing your products for Amazon and even adding a "Watch Coach Build" video or two, which should make the setup process even easier for you!